Costner Cinema Chat

A site in which Kevin Costner's movies are discussed

Sunday, October 22, 2006

New Mr. Brooks poster

A new Mr. Brooks poster is shown at Red's site. Go to

http://www.kevincostnerscrapbook.co.uk/film/films.html

Click on "Graphics" where Mr. Brooks is listed, and click on "US Poster."

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Reviewing the critics

I'll post my review of The Guardian later today. First, a review of the critics' reviews of The Guardian, which were (to use a term they love so much) boring and predictable, with notable exceptions (Denver Post's Lisa Kennedy and the great Leonard Maltin). I've never seen such a wide discrepancy between the public and the critics as I have on this movie.

In August, A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote about that phenomenon (referring to the summer movies):

AVAST, ME CRITICS! YE KILL THE FUNBy A.O. SCOTT(Critic's Notebook)c.2006 New York Times News ServiceLet's start with a few numbers. At Rottentomatoes.com, a Web site thatquantifies movie reviews on a 100-point scale, the aggregate score for``Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest'' stands at a sodden 54.Metacritic.com, a similar site, crunches the critical prose of the nation'sreviewers and comes up with a numerical grade of 52 out of 100. Even in anera of rampant grade inflation, that's a solid F.Meanwhile, over at boxofficemojo.com, where the daily grosses are tabulated,the second installment in the ``Pirates'' series, which opened on July 7,plunders onward, trailing broken records in its wake. Its $136 millionfirst-weekend take was the highest three-day tally in history, building on abest-ever $55 million on that Friday, and it is cruising into blockbusterterritory at a furious clip. As of this writing, a mere 10 days into itsrun, the movie has brought in $258.2 million, a hit by any measure.All of which makes ``Dead Man's Chest'' a fascinating sequel _ not to ``Curseof the Black Pearl,'' which inaugurated the franchise three years ago, butto ``The Da Vinci Code.'' Way back in the early days of the Hollywood summer_ the third week in May, to be precise _ America's finest critics troopedinto screening rooms in Cannes, Los Angeles, New York and points between,saw Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's best seller, and emerged in a fitof collective grouchiness. The movie promptly pocketed some of the biggestopening-weekend grosses in the history of its studio, Sony.For the second time this summer, then, my colleagues and I must face afrequently _ and not always politely _ asked question: What is wrong withyou people? I will, for now, suppress the impulse to turn the question onthe moviegoing public, which persists in paying good money to see bad moviesthat I see free. I don't for a minute believe that financial successcontradicts negative critical judgment; $500 million from now, ``Dead Man'sChest'' will still be, in my estimation, occasionally amusing, frequentlytedious and entirely too long.But the discrepancy between what critics think and how the public behaves isof perennial interest because it throws into relief some basic questionsabout taste, economics and the nature of popular entertainment, as well asthe more vexing issue of what, exactly, critics are for.Are we out of touch with the audience? Why do we go sniffing after art whereeveryone else is looking for fun, and spoiling everybody's fun when itdoesn't live up to our notion or art? What gives us the right to yell``bomb'' outside a crowded theater? Variations on these questions arriveregularly in our e-mail in-boxes, and also constitute a major theme in thecomments sections of film blogs and Web sites.Online, everyone is a critic, which is as it should be: professionalprerogatives aside, a critic is really just anyone who thinks out loud aboutsomething he or she cares about, and gets into arguments with fellowenthusiasts. But it would be silly to pretend that those professionalprerogatives don't exist, and that they don't foster a degree of resentment.Entitled elites, self-regarding experts, bearers of intellectual orinstitutional authority, misfits who get to see a movie before anybody elseand then take it upon themselves to give away the ending: Such people areeasy targets of populist anger. Just who do we think we are?There is no easy answer to this question. Film criticism _ at least aspracticed in the general-interest daily and weekly press _ has never been aspecialist pursuit. Movies, more than any other art form, are understood tobe common cultural property, something everyone can enjoy, which makes anyclaim of expertise suspect. Therefore, a certain estrangement between us andthem _ or me and you, to put it plainly _ has been built into the enterprisefrom the start.The current schism is in some ways nothing new: go back and read reviews inThe New York Times of ``Top Gun,'' ``Crocodile Dundee'' and ``The Karate KidPart II'' to see how some of my predecessors dealt with three of thetop-earning movies 20 years ago. (The Australian with the big knife wastreated more kindly than the flyboy or the high-kicker, by the way.) And thedivide between critic and public may also be temporary. Last year, duringthe Great Box-Office Slump of 2005, we all seemed happy to shrug together atthe mediocrity of the big studio offerings.No more. Whatever the slump might have portended for the movie industry, itappears to be over for the moment, and the critics have resumed theircustomary role of scapegoat. The modern blockbuster _ the movie thatmillions of people line up to see more or less simultaneously, on the firstconvenient showing on the opening weekend _ can be seen as the fulfillmentof the democratic ideal the movies were born to fulfill. To stand outsidethat happy communal experience and, worse, to regard it with skepticism orwith scorn, is to be a crank, a malcontent, a snob.So we're damned if we don't. And sometimes, also, if we do. When ourbreathless praise garlands advertisements for movies the public greets witha shrug, we look like suckers or shills. But these accusations would stickonly if the job of the critic were to reflect, predict or influence thepublic taste.That, however, is the job of the Hollywood studios, in particular of theirmarketing and publicity departments, and it is the professional duty ofcritics to be out of touch with _ to be independent of _ their concerns.These companies spend tens of millions of dollars to persuade you that theopening of a movie is a public event, a cultural experience you will want tobe part of.The campaign of persuasion starts weeks or months _ or, in the case ofmultisequel cash cows, years _ before the tickets go on sale, with the goalof making their purchase a foregone conclusion by the time the first reviewsappear. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but the judgment ofcritics almost never makes the difference between failure and success, atleast for mass-release, big-budget movies like ``Dead Man's Chest'' or ``TheDa Vinci Code.''So why review them? Why not let the market do its work, let the audience haveits fun and occupy ourselves with the arcana _ the art _ we criticsostensibly prefer? The obvious answer is that art, or at least the kind ofpleasure, wonder and surprise we associate with art, often pops out ofcommerce, and we want to be around to celebrate when it does and to complainwhen it doesn't.But the deeper answer is that our love of movies is sometimes expressed as amistrust of the people who make and sell them, and even of the people whosee them. We take entertainment very seriously, which is to say that wedon't go to the movies for fun. Or for money. We do it for you.

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Well, I have a rebuttal for Mr. Scott, who didn't like The Guardian, either.

My heart bleeds for you, A.O. It sounds a lot in parts of this essay like you are blaming us, the public, for liking movies you don't.
I went into The Guardian with lowered expectations, in good part because of what critics like you said. I liked the movie a lot, including the performances of its cast, and absolutely was moved by KC's performance. You all are so hell-bent on looking for art that I won't disagree with you in one respect: You don't go to the movies for enjoyment. Because you've absolutely lost the capacity to do so. And because of that, there's no way you can communicate with us, the moviegoers.You see several hundred movies a year, usually at bosses' expense. The average moviegoer might see a half-dozen at most, paying their own way (when they can afford it). That big discrepancy creates another discrepancy between critics' viewpoints and the public's viewpoints.
There is no rule without exception: Miraculously, there are people like Leonard Maltin who can see those movies, but never forget that he's writing for the public. But the vast majority of movie critics are insulated in their own little world, where their tastes are different (and often their values, too) from the general public. And so you have discrepancies like the one over "The Guardian."
I've seen, after long, painful years of cheap shots, critical opinion over Kevin Costner's work start to evolve - sometimes after the critic (David Poland is one example) has had a chance to talk with him about moviemaking. My goal, Mr. Scott, is to see your flock come to accept him on his terms - not yours.